


The Road You Choose

by luckybarton



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Pokemon Fusion, Anxiety, Apricorns, Awesome Edwin Jarvis, Boarding School, Canonical Character Death, Crossover, Deaf Clint Barton, Gen, Growing Up, Howard Stark is Howard Silph, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Kid Tony Stark, Pokeball "Science", Pokeball(s), Pokemon - Freeform, Pokemon Breeders, Pokemon Contests, Pokemon Training, The Silph Company, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark is Tony Silph, What-If, Worldbuilding Heavy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-13 01:16:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14739348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckybarton/pseuds/luckybarton
Summary: Tony Silph is heir to the largest technology company in Kanto. Maybe the largest in the world, one day.So there's no Trainer School.No journey.Nothing that could be classed as a normal childhood, really.The world is changing rapidly, though. Tony's dragged along.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While writing the third chapter, I realised that it would be a good idea to provide a reference for new pokémon that appeared in each chapter as well as some of the canon basis for worldbuilding decisions. You'll be able to find these in the end notes of each chapter.

When he was ten years old, Tony Silph packed a bag. It was his father’s, and once it had been emptied, there was enough space for pyjamas, an extra t-shirt, and a few pokeballs they’d been tinkering with the weekend before. He’d barely stepped into the lobby on the ground floor of the Silph Tower, though, before Jarvis found him and whisked him back up to the penthouse. The ensuing discussion had resulted in tears, slammed doors, and the overdue explanation that no, Tony wasn’t going on a Pokémon Journey. He’d been nice about it, at least, though he wasn’t sure what else he’d expect from Jarvis.

His father came back late that evening, just after Tony had been tucked into bed—and just before he’d slipped out of his room and into the hallway that connected through to the kitchen. He’d heard the start of a discussion About Him through the walls, and he was determined to hear the rest of it even though both adults had proceeded to lower their voices and angrily whisper instead.

“You still should have spoken to him about this earlier.” Jarvis hissed. Tony crept up to the doorway, a plush Eevee held close in his arms, straining to hear more of the conversation. He nudged the door open by just a crack, then winced as the hinge creaked loudly.

Howard swore. Tony dropped the toy and ran back to his bedroom, dove under the covers and pretended to be asleep. He heard footsteps in the hallway, some murmuring, and the footsteps’ eventual retreat.

Though he didn’t remember falling asleep, Tony was startled awake by a repeated tap on his shoulder. Howard was perched on his bedside table, smiling broadly. “Dad? What are you doing here?” Tony croaked. He could barely see any light coming in through the windows, so it had to be _way_ too early to get up.

“There’s an Officer Jenny who owed me one—well, the entire department, really,” Howard said, “so I may have pulled a couple of strings.” He reached into a pocket and revealed a plastic card, waving it before Tony’s eyes. He took a moment to read the text.

“A trainer card,” Tony said, “so I can go?”

“No,” his father replied, “you can’t. But I also got you...this.” He revealed a military-style pokéball, the kind the police used. “I’m not much of a trainer, but Jarvis can help you. And your mother, when she gets back from Verdanturf.”

“Okay,” Tony said, unsure about either of these prospects. He’d asked a month ago about seeing his mother and didn’t dare trying again—and he wasn’t sure if Jarvis knew much about pokémon at all.

After a hasty goodbye, Howard left the apartment, making Tony the only person already awake. He picked up the pokéball from the table his father had left it on. It was one of the older ones, a blue-and-gray model designed to take heavy wear. The Apricorn shell was reinforced with a steel exoskeleton, which added weight but not so much as to cause irritation. Despite the ball's age, it didn't show any outward signs of wear: he expected the the enamel around its cap to be scuffed, but it showed only the barest hints of use.

So it had been used, then, meaning that there was a pokémon inside of it. But what? The Silph Company produced the balls used for distribution of starter pokemon, and Tony, having observed the process of creating them, knew that this wasn't that. His father wouldn’t have caught it, and if it had been caught recently, it wouldn't be in this style of ball: they hadn’t even available to the general public when they were new.

Tony pointed the cap of the pokéball away from his body before twisting it off. A burst of red plasma poured out from it, forming the shape of a small, four-legged pokémon, which faded into its corporeal form to reveal itself as a young Growlithe, which immediately ran to his feet and started to yap. Tony asked it if it was hungry, and it seemed to understand, barking what could almost be construed as an affirmative and waiting expectantly. It followed him to the kitchen, where the boy poured them both a bowl of cereal and placed one on the stone floor, where it settled with a clink. The Growlithe eyed the multi-coloured globes with suspicion, nosing the bowl as if it might pose a threat. After a solid minute of staring it down, the pokémon extended its tongue and gently licked a purple puff of carbohydrates. Assured that the food, was, in fact, edible, it devoured the bowl in a matter of seconds, then whined plaintively.

“You can’t have more cereal,” Tony told it, sternly.

“What’s going on out there?” Jarvis shouted, causing Tony to jump and the Growlithe to run towards the source of the noise, eager to investigate. Tony scrambled after it. He reached the outside of Jarvis’s room just as Jarvis swung the door open and gave the Growlithe a window of opportunity to barrel through his legs and crash into the wall behind him. Jarvis spun around, only to see the pint-sized ball of fluff walking around in a circle, seemingly dazed from the incident.

Jarvis looked to the Growlithe, then to Tony. Tony looked at Jarvis, then Jarvis’s feet. “What happened?” The explanation that followed was jumbled and slightly confusing, but Jarvis seemed to understand anyway. “So the licence was issued by the police. Do you know where he got the Growlithe from?”

“He didn’t mention.” Tony replied. “I think it’s also from the Officer Jenny, though. Police use Growlithes, right? And it’s a police pokéball.”

“It’s also a working breed,” Jarvis replied. “It might still be a puppy, but you can already tell. I’ll ask your father, but I think your guess is correct.”

Tony stared at him. “There are different kinds?”

Jarvis nodded, keeping an eye on the Growlithe, which was chasing its tail in the corner of the room. “You know how a lot of pokémon have different varieties based on the climate they’re from? Like the Ice Vulpix from Alola. Or how wild Pikachu from Kanto are more cold-resistant than Hoenn ones.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, who was sure it had been in a textbook at some point but didn’t really remember.

“Do you know why?” Jarvis prompted. Tony shook his head. “When Pokémon are better at living in their environment, they’re able to have more baby pokémon. They pass on their skills to their babies, who are more likely to breed with other pokémon with good traits, and have babies who are even more different. Eventually, you have pokémon who are better suited to where they live, but aren’t different enough from other ones to be considered a different species.”

“Where did you learn all this?”

“I used to be an assistant for a Pokémon Breeder,” Jarvis said, “and though she focused on Butterfree, everything she taught me is applicable to other pokémon. I can show you a couple.”

“Sure,” Tony said, “do you think they’ll like the Growlithe?”

“First of all,” Jarvis began, “you’ve got to stop calling it that.”

“Calling it what?”

 _“The_ Growlithe. Like it isn’t your own.”

Tony paused. “But I don’t want to call it Growlithe. I just don’t have a name.”

“I’m sure you can come up with one,” Jarvis told him, then stared at the orange canid, which was looking guiltily at a pool of sick on his pillow, “and—is that _rainbow-coloured vomit_?”

Once Jarvis had given Tony a lecture about proper nutrition for pokémon and dragged him to a Pokémart to buy food more suitable for an obligate carnivore, they went to the fields surrounding Saffron City’s Contest Hall. “Here,” he said, “you’ll be able to play with your Growlithe. Without burning the Tower down.”

“Can you show me your Butterfree?” Tony said, setting down his bag. Jarvis withdrew three Pokéballs from his own satchel. The original colour of the apricorns they were made from—white— was visible, and though they’d obviously seen some use, they hadn’t accumulated the sheer variety of scratches one owned by a travelling trainer would. Jarvis’s pokéballs were of an even older style than Tony’s, handmade by a professional craftsman. Their two halves were connected to one another by pivot joints, their seams almost invisible when they were shut. Jarvis flipped a copper latch on each one and spun around the top of the balls, allowing red light to spill out and reveal three Bug-type pokémon with large, white wings and purple bodies.

“These are Clearie, Seventy-Nine, and Adelaide,” he said, each Butterfree responding to its name with a purr as he said it.

“You have _seventy-eight_ more of these?” Tony exclaimed, bug-eyed.

“No, no,” Jarvis clarified, “Seventy-Nine is a medical Butterfree. Or used to be, anyway, and the lab he’s from has over a thousand. His poison glands don’t produce anything anymore, so they gave him to me—but I could never get him to respond to a real name.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Each medical strain is bred for the purity of one specific compound they produce,” Jarvis said, “which have a lot of uses, really. That’s less important for a trainer’s Butterfree—in fact, you don’t want them to be too strong, or an attack of, say, Stun Spore, could be lethal. You want wingpower, and the ability to produce a large range of _effective_ powders. Clearie’s one of those,” he said, gesturing to a physically robust Butterfree with broader wings and larger eyes than the others.

“What about that one?” Tony asked, gesturing to the last, which had a more deeply coloured body and large, almost translucent wings that ended in points instead of the usual curved tips.

“Adelaide is a Beach Rose Aviator,” Jarvis began, “one of the varieties of Butterfree that’s meant for Pokémon Contests and not battles. They’re almost non-toxic, and the shape of their wings are more decorative than useful—they can fly, and generate a lot of boost quickly, but they’re not actually optimal for much else. And they’re thin enough that on the rare occasion someone _does_ use one in battle, they get torn to shreds.”

“So, no fighting,” Tony said, mildly disappointed.

“Your Growlithe’s too young for that, anyway,” Jarvis reminded him, “she has to learn to listen to you, first. Do you want to take her out?”

“Yeah,” Tony reached into Jarvis’s bag and fished out the military-design twist-cap ball. “Wait, _her?_ ”

“Yeah, she’s a girl,” Jarvis responded. “You’re going to want to start by teaching her her name. Do you have one?”

Tony nodded. “Delta. Like the math symbol.”

“That’s the triangle, right?” Jarvis said, and laughed. “I’m not sure I ever got that far.”

“Sort of,” Tony scratched the back of his head. “It’s—you use it to show the change in something. Like distance, or speed. I’ve never had a pokémon before, which is a pretty big change, so I thought...”

“It’s great,” Jarvis said. “Delta it is.”

Tony and Jarvis spent the remainder of the afternoon trying to get Delta to respond to her name. She already knew a few commands—not any that could be used in battle, just useful ones like ‘sit’ and ‘heel’.

“She probably already knows how to use ‘bite’,” Jarvis said, “but I don’t really want her to try it on one of my pokémon, and I haven’t got a pokédoll to test that on.”

Tony nodded, pulled off a shoe, then threw it to his Growlithe. “Delta, bite it!” Delta caught the shoe out of the air, chomped down hard on the leather, then held it firmly in her jaw. “Uh, drop it?” Tony added, and the shoe clattered to the ground, newly pierced holes appearing in a curved line that matched the shape of Delta’s mouth.

Jarvis groaned. “Don’t do that again,” he said, retrieving the shoe. He handed it back to Tony, who pinched it between his thumb and forefinger, wrinkled his face and asked with utter disdain,

“Do I have to wear this?”

 _“Yes,_ you _do.”_

Tony’s left foot squelched the whole way back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pokémon that appear or are mentioned for the first time in this chapter:  
>    
> [Growlithe](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Growlithe), [Butterfree](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Butterfree), [Eevee](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Eevee)
> 
> In almost all pokémon media, [variants of pokémon species](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Variant_Pok%C3%A9mon) have been seen, from Pink Butterfree to Alola Forms.
> 
> Pokéballs are traditionally made from [apricorns](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Apricorn). You can see an older model of pokéball in the film [Celebi: The Voice of the Forest](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/M04). [Here's a screenshot](https://archives.bulbagarden.net/wiki/File:Sammy_Old_Pok%C3%A9_Ball.png).


	2. Chapter 2

The seasons changed with what seemed like astonishing speed, and Jarvis finally gave Tony the go-ahead to teach Delta fire-type moves. Many hours were spent and seemingly wasted trying to get the Growlithe to recognise that ‘Ember’ was in any way related to the small bursts of flame she excitedly spat, but Tony got through to her via a mixture of determination and cereal-based bribery. The ensuing experiments in making toast and cooking apples were less than successful, which resulted in Tony’s banning from the roof _‘until you can be sensible’_ and relegation to the apartment.

It wasn’t like there was nothing to do inside, but it wasn’t as if any of it was interesting, either. So Tony stole a key to the upper workshop. It wasn’t like he _wasn’t supposed to be there,_ he decided. Jarvis was occupied with business with his father, and his father was occupied with business with Jarvis, and they hadn’t told him not to leave—just to stay off the roof of Silph Tower.

Tony had done it regardless of the moral complications, and he paced through the workshop with Delta by his side, desperate for something to do. There were the pokéballs in the shelving unit: every model the Silph Company made, and some they hadn’t. The materials used to make them were stored on a shelf by the window overlooking Saffron City, and the tools to make them in another.

In the end, it was the box of dusty scraps that caught his attention. Though Howard would wax poetic about the Silph Company’s big breakthrough to shareholders, competitors, and attendees of industry conferences, wholly synthetic pokéballs remained theoretical. Each ball still required an entire apricorn to produce—and apricorns were _irritating._ The trees wouldn’t grow reliably outside extremely specific soil-and-weather combinations, which created a bottleneck in the form of two orchards in Johto. You couldn’t use them when they were either under- or overripe, and the timing between the two states was so precise as to be a matter of hours.

The scraps—failed replacements of traditional pokéballs—were fairly useless, but Tony pulled a few from the box and laid them on the workbench anyway. The only mechanism that consistently worked was the transfer module, which would convert the pokémon to plasma form so it could be held. The problem after _that_ had been the holding itself. His father had said something about ‘unstable fields’ and rematerializing, but the tangible manifestation of the problem was that the pokémon would rematerialize outside of the balls shortly after it had been ‘captured’.

Tony rolled Delta’s ball around in his hand. The serial number on the ball was gonna be wrong—it’d be listed as police property, and he knew that could get him in trouble. Jarvis’s arguments with Howard were few, but audible, and Delta’s origin had been the cause of one.

Jarvis had said that he could have just _given_ Tony one of his own, and the emphasis made Tony shudder.

So he needed to move Delta to a different ball, but that was impossible. A pokémon tied to one ball couldn’t be captured by another. But if the plasma was transferred...Tony shook his head. It was too crazy to work.

But then he built it anyway, connecting an assortment of scrap pieces to form a machine that would, in theory, transfer Delta to a new Pokéball. He recalled her, then set her pokéball on one end of the machine and a red-and-gold model on the other.

“Please work,” he said, and flipped the switch. The machine powered on with a whir, and a faint glow was visible through the connecting pipe as the transfer initiated. After a few terse moments, it shut itself off. He picked up the pokéball, checking it for damage. “Delta, you can come out.”

It had worked. The machine had really worked. And he was gonna show it to his dad, and to Jarvis, and his mom when she got back, and—

“Tony, what are you doing here?” It was Jarvis, in the doorway.

“I was building this,” Tony said, gesturing to the machine.

Jarvis rubbed his face. “I have—so much to say about this. What does it do, Tony?”

“I needed to get Delta into another ball,” he said, “so the police don’t take her.”

“The police—why are you worried about that?” Jarvis said, cautiously.

“It had their serial number,” Tony said, “but it worked, and she’s in this one now.”

“It would have only been a problem if you’d lost her, Tony,” Jarvis told him. “So the machine worked, then.”

“Yeah,” Tony said. He held up Delta’s new pokéball as proof.

“Did you—test that on Delta?” Jarvis said, “for the first time?”

Tony shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“That could have been dangerous,” Jarvis said, “you could have tested with a Pokédoll first. What if it had broken?”

“Nothing would have happened,” Tony said. “If the containment stops working, the pokémon stops being plasma and starts being a pokémon again. So Delta would have been okay.”

“Still,” Jarvis said. “Imagine if she hadn’t been. Let’s say the machine split the plasma.”

Tony paled. “I didn’t think...”

“You didn’t,” Jarvis chided. “You shouldn’t have been in here without an adult, either.”

“You wouldn’t have come,” Tony said, “you’re busy.”

“That was temporary,” Jarvis replied. “I’m glad neither of you are hurt, but next time, ask.” They went back upstairs in near-silence. “I’m also going to need your key back,” Jarvis said, upon reaching the door. Tony hesitantly handed it over.

“Are you gonna tell him?” Tony asked. “I don’t wanna get—”

“You’re already in trouble,” Jarvis said, “so we’ll see what he has to say.”

As it turned out, Howard didn’t care at all that Tony had stolen the key, sneaked into a workshop, and used highly dangerous machinery to create a potentially dangerous machine. Instead, he praised him for the invention—apparently, it was entirely new and nobody had ever done it before, and he’d ruffled Tony’s hair and called him ‘a chip off the old block’, which felt like the nicest thing he’d heard in weeks.

“Let’s go back down there,” Howard said, “see if we can make it _better.”_

“No,” Jarvis said, cutting in. “If you’re going to work in this state, you’re not taking Tony.”

Tony glanced away. “Tomorrow?”

Howard agreed, then left for the elevator anyway. When Tony returned to the workshop with Jarvis, the machine had been fully disassembled. His father knelt beside it, seemingly reconstructing it from different parts.

“You took it apart,” Tony said.

“Yeah,” Howard said, “I needed to see how it worked. You’re not upset, are you?”

“No,” Tony said, “you gotta break things first to build them better,” he said, repeating a phrase Howard was fond of.

“That’s my boy,” Howard said. “Y’know—if we can build this in a, uh, less janky way, we can send this for manufacture.”

“I didn’t make blueprints,” Tony said.

“Yeah, which is why I’m trying to work it out,” Howard said. “D’you think you could draw one up?”

“Okay,” Tony said, and took a pencil from the table. “So it uses a transfer module to get the pokémon from the pokéball, and another one to put it into the empty one.”

“You shouldn’t need the second,” Howard replied. “The pokéball should just take it in.”

“Not if it’s closed,” Tony said, “and it isn’t a normal one, anyway. I changed it,” he added, and explained the differences he’d added to the base transfer module to make it work.

“Did you test this first?” Howard asked. “Because that sounds like it could split the plasma.”

“It didn’t,” Tony said, defensively.

“Yeah, well,” Howard said, “Pokédolls only on this one, you hear? Not until we palm it off to QA.”

A few days later, Howard introduced Tony to a man he called a _business partner._ He shook Tony’s hand and asked him questions about the machine he’d built, then introduced himself. His name was Giovanni.

Jarvis didn’t like Giovanni much, but Tony did. He was interesting, and he had weird candy from the Hoenn region. He liked it when Tony talked about his ideas, and he got Howard to let him spend more time in the workshop.

“I’m going to teach you how to battle,” Jarvis said, as they were eating breakfast one morning.

“Battle,” Tony repeated. It hadn’t been something he’d been thinking about much. Not now that they were finishing the pokéball transfer.

“I think Delta’s ready, and I think you’re ready, too,” Jarvis said. “We’ll go to the field.”

Along with the moves she’d known when he got her, Delta could consistently use Ember. By combining it with biting, she was able to do a move Jarvis called Fire Fang.

“You want to battle differently against wild and trained pokémon,” Jarvis said. Wild pokémon were usually weaker, and it wasn’t necessary to use as much force. Battling wild pokémon was also more of a show of strength than real fighting. Essentially, he concluded, with a wild battle, it was almost ceremonial. You wanted to impress the wild pokémon and show it that you would help it become stronger. With a trainer battle, you actually wanted to win. “And don’t let anyone tell you that you owe them half your money if they beat you,” he added.

“People do that?” Tony said, horrified.

“It is legal,” Jarvis said. “But only if you agree first.”

Jarvis had Tony train Delta versus a Snorlax. It seemed ridiculous, and somewhat dangerous, but Tony quickly decided that this had to be the laziest Snorlax ever. The toughest, as well. Everything Delta did just bounced off it—sometimes literally. When Tony voiced this, Jarvis laughed and pointed out that the Snorlax had once belonged to a very serious trainer. At this point, the Snorlax was very strong. Delta was still a puppy.

“How many pokémon _do_ you have?” Tony asked, when Jarvis had recalled his Snorlax.

Tony considered twenty-three pokémon quite a lot, but Jarvis explained that most trainers had a lot more pokémon than that. “I wanted to spend more time with them,” he said. “At some point, you stop having time for all of them.”

Tony didn’t know when Jarvis _did_ have time for all of them, because when he wasn’t with him, he was doing something for his father. Or, on occasion, for his father and Giovanni, who was around a whole lot more now.

Tony asked Giovanni how many pokémon he had, once, when they were prepping the transfer machine for a run of tests. He’d laughed, and said that he’d collected too many to count. “There’s one I don’t have, though,” he said. “Only one.”

He returned to Jarvis and repeated Giovanni’s story, about a missing pokémon that contained the DNA of every other one. One that could learn any move in the world.

Jarvis shook his head. “Well, for one thing, DNA doesn’t work like that, and for another, Mew isn’t actually any older than, say, Relicanth. It’s just very rare, and there are a lot of myths about it.”

He didn’t repeat what Jarvis had said to Giovanni, but he didn’t forget it, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pokémon that appear or are mentioned for the first time in this chapter:  
>   
> [Snorlax](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Snorlax_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\)), [Mew](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Mew_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\)), [Relicanth](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Relicanth_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\))


	3. Chapter 3

The transfer machine had a problem. Or rather, it _was_ a problem, because QA worked out that it could break the protection on a trainer-restricted pokéball. The Silph Company made a lot of money from selling those to people who needed to send pokémon long distance or who felt particularly paranoid—if they started selling a tool that could unlock them, they’d only undercut themselves.

Howard had largely kicked Tony out from the workshop, citing ‘lost time’ and ‘shareholders’.

“He said it was _useless,_ ” Tony spat. He was sitting on a sofa and staring at his feet. Jarvis was making coffee at the other end of the room.

“He didn’t mean it,” Jarvis said. He walked over and sat down beside Tony.

“No, I think he did mean it,” he stated, rolling Delta’s pokéball around in his hands. Jarvis gently took it from him and released Delta. She padded around his feet before settling down on them, burying his toes in cream-coloured fur. Jarvis was quiet for a while after that.

After a while of silence, Jarvis looked over and asked Tony if he’d ever been to a pokémon contest. Tony shook his head. “Well, I guess that settles it,” Jarvis said. “We’ll go to one tonight.”

Tony wasn’t sure what a pokémon contest had to do with anything, but he nodded anyway. “Sure,” he managed, after a long period of silence wherein he did nothing but pet Delta and watch her lick the floor. “We’ll go to one.”

Delta had to go back in her ball before they could enter the contest hall, but Tony only called her back reluctantly. The lobby was full of people, and the sound of their conversations competing with the whir of various berry blenders was overwhelming. He gripped Jarvis’s arm and didn’t let go until they were through to the hall.

Tony had seen the Wallace Cup on TV once, so he vaguely remembered how pokémon contests worked. Jarvis quickly ran through the rules, anyway. In the first round, coordinators would demonstrate their skill and style in a solo performance. In the second, a battle would take place—but points were awarded to style and strategy as well as according to who won. Scores were also weighted according to audience reaction.

The first contestant up was a girl with a Butterfree that danced through the air, leaving a glittering blue trail in the air behind it that drifted slowly to the ground. The crowd reaction was modest, but the judges didn’t rate it well.

“It’s not considered creative,” Jarvis explained. “She might get through, but only if nobody else is better.”

The second-to-last one was Tony’s favourite. A teenage boy led a Vulpix to strategically combine two moves to create a spiral of purple flame. It jumped from his hands and spiralled around him, creating a coil that encircled the coordinator on stage before gracefully landing by his side. It didn’t surprise him much when the contestant won his battle in the second stage as well, beating out a coordinator from Sinnoh whose Roselia scattered leaves and petals across the floor. It had tripped the Vulpix up at first, but it swiftly made a comeback by setting them on fire.

The contest ended with the second-round winners being awarded ribbons. Shortly afterwards, everyone tried to leave the arena at once. Tony hardly seemed to notice the crowd this time around. “I didn’t even know you could _do_ things like that,” he enthused.

“It’s different when you see it in real life, right?” Jarvis said, and waited for the mass of people to dissipate further before leading him out of the contest hall.

The move that made the purple flame was called Will-o-Wisp, and Tony was disappointed to learn that Growlithes couldn’t learn it. He was confused, though, when Jarvis told him that the second part of the move was Flame Wheel—which he already knew a Vulpix couldn’t learn.

“There are two reasons Pokémon can’t learn moves,” Jarvis explained. “One of them is that they physically can’t do it. The other is that the species of Pokémon doesn’t tend to learn it by themselves.” A Growlithe like Delta would tumble about and learn Flame Wheel purely by accident. A Vulpix would need to be coached in _how to roll._

“So they _can_ learn it,” Tony said, interested.

“But they usually don’t because it’s hard for them to work out,” Jarvis said. “It’s not always straightforward, either. Growlithes can learn Agility, which is like a low-powered psychic move. And Arcanines can learn Thunder Fang.”

“But they’re _fire-types,”_ Tony said, suspicious.

Jarvis thought for a moment. “Pokémon aren’t based on types, types are based on pokémon,” he said. “Some pokémon even get new types when people reclassify things. When I was a kid, Togepi was considered to be a normal-type. But then the fairy-type classification was added, and it got changed.”

Tony spent the next few days teaching Delta to somersault. Though he’d seen her roll head-over-heels accidentally, Jarvis had said she’d learn faster by doing it on purpose. What Delta _couldn’t_ do yet was Flamethrower. Though she could use Ember, and breathe flame in short bursts, she just wasn’t ready yet.

Delta was a fast learner, and learned to do one turn quite quickly. Then she worked out how to do multiple, and before long a vase was broken. Jarvis wasn’t in the apartment, so Tony scrambled to clean it up and get it into a trash can before he returned. He shoved the last of the shards under a couch as he heard the doorknob click and the door swing open.

“Jarvis,” Tony called.

But it wasn’t Jarvis. It was Howard, and he was grinning wildly, rushing into the apartment like a whirlwind that wouldn’t settle. “I’ve solved it,” he announced, as if speaking to an audience. Delta ran to Tony’s side.

Tony glanced to the ground. He didn’t see any more pieces of glass on the floor. “Solved what?” he asked, glancing up to Howard.

“Take a look,” Howard said, and handed Tony a lightweight, metallic pokéball.

“It’s not very heavy,” he said, after a moment of inspection.

“No apricorn,” Howard said, and began to speak rapid-fire about what he’d done to make it possible. “Once QA is done with it—boom. I’ve already filed the patent.”

Jarvis entered the room as he finished his sentence, having arrived at some point during the conversation. “You’ve done what?”

“In a few years, the Silph Company will be the only company in Kanto that makes pokéballs at all.”

The numbers added up. Even if the company spent millions of pokédollars in further development and testing, the monetary and time savings of not needing an apricorn for each ball meant that they would be able to produce more pokéballs, faster. They’d be able to price them lower and reach a wider market—entirely outcompeting their competitors.

After a few months, Giovanni came back to talk to Howard about the transfer machine. The trainer-lock mechanism was also faulty on the new balls, allowing transfer of pokémon even when the pokéballs were protected from use. But the trainer-lock was significantly cheaper to add to the new balls, and they weren’t in production yet.

They applied it to all of them. It was an ‘added security measure’. An extra marketing ploy.

But what it meant, in the end, was that trainers would no longer be able to simply trade away their pokémon.

Tony, for his part, was unaware of this plot. His father, along with Giovanni, had him working on a two-way version of a transfer machine: a _trade machine_ which would swap the pokémon in the two balls that were placed into it. Internally, it was a mess of valves and piping, but it worked. The day it was put into production was the proudest he’d ever seen his father be of him. He seemed to have entirely forgotten that he’d called them ‘useless’ in the first place.

The trade machines went out before the new pokéballs, mainly finding places in pokémon centers, where they were initially used in the case of broken or damaged pokéballs that couldn’t be opened in normal ways. Research labs used them to test the differences between balls produced with different types of apricorn, comparing their behaviour when holding the same exact pokémon.

Giovanni put in an order for a hundred, their destinations scattered across the world.

The pokéballs would be released in a year’s time. Between then and the present, there were press conferences to go to—Howard had decided that his son was, in fact, an adequate representative of his company—and coordinator training, which Jarvis was more than happy to assist him with.

Howard was less so. “Why do you even find it interesting?” he asked, one evening, when he was feeling particularly scathing. “The judging isn’t even empirical. It’s all feelings and shit. _Please,_ ” he said, in the most caustic tone he could muster, “do something useful with your time.”

Tony spent a long time trying to define what Howard thought of as ‘useful’. Spending time schmoozing strangers he’d never meet again at galas was _useful._ Tony was almost a prop in these scenarios, playing out the role of the precocious child. He didn’t think anything he’d done was particularly impressive—he was only working with what his father had taught him, and he hadn’t learned everything yet. Pokémon _training_ was useful _,_ but the theory behind it wasn’t. He had a similar mentality toward engineering, though, so Tony wasn’t overly surprised.

What was more surprising, and thus harder to predict, was what Howard thought of as ‘useless’. In an effort to avoid this categorization himself, Tony tried to find links between all the things Howard disapproved of. But there wasn’t a signal so much as a wall of noise that sometimes seemed to be one, and his attempts were fairly futile.

One of them was an attempt to link contests to engineering. The Vulpix’s purple flames had stuck in his mind—what if fire-type moves could be _any_ colour? Through research into chemistry and magicians’ techniques, he found a way to soak small cloths in chemicals that would change the appearance of a flame. With sleight of hand, they could be used in a contest, temporarily changing a pokémon’s flame to almost any colour.

They worked magnificently with Delta, and the first time he demonstrated it to Jarvis, the man was bewildered.

“Green,” he said. “There aren’t any moves that make green flame, Tony.”

Tony showed him the cloths. “They aren’t illegal in contests,” he explained.

“Huh,” Jarvis had said, and warned him not to use any chemicals that might give off noxious smoke.

Howard had been distinctly less impressed, not finding it or its application complex enough to be worthy of merit.

None of his efforts amounted to much, compared against the massive success that the trade machines were part of. By the time Howard and Giovanni’s scheme had come to fruition, the machines had already paid for their R&D costs. The release and popularisation of the artificial pokéballs led to a slow-but-steady increase in their sales across all markets, because trainers were starting to request them. They’d caught their pokémon in Silph Company pokéballs—or transferred them into them—and now they wanted to make trades.

After that kind of game-changer, nothing would ever measure up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pokémon that appear or are mentioned in this chapter for the first time:  
>   
> [Togepi](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Togepi_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\)), [Vulpix](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Vulpix_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\))
> 
> [Trade machines](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Trade_machine) are used to trade pokemon between two trainers. While trading is a major mechanic of the pokemon games, the purpose of trading machines for trading pokemon between two people in the same room is never fully explained in the anime.
> 
> [In the anime, particularly in the Diamond and Pearl series, pokemon moves are often combined to create ways of attacking that don't exist in the games.](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Move#In_the_anime) [Combining moves](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Contest_combination) by using them in set sequences is a mechanic of in-game contest battles, however.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [points at warnings]

The autopsy said it was a heart attack. A condition brought on by years of smoking and binge-drinking, likely compounded by stress. This was presented to Tony almost as if it _might not be true,_ that his father _might_ have been doing something right when he keeled over in his workshop. That there was the possibility it was a fluke.

He was fourteen, not stupid, and he said as much to Jarvis, but Jarvis was crying more than he was. The world had been pitched into slow motion and was starting to spin out of his control, and all he wanted to do was to close his eyes, stand still, and pretend that nothing had happened.

For the span of time before Tony became an adult, Giovanni would become the interim CEO of the Silph Company. His rights were explained to him several times over, but nothing really stuck. He showed up to what he had to and left as soon as he could, spending his time alone holding Delta and wishing that he would feel _something_ beyond the deep and impenetrable nothingness that had surrounded him.

Giovanni fired Jarvis, and the realisation that he felt worse about that than when his father had _died_ made Tony feel sick to his stomach.

Within a week, he’d be in the Sinnoh region. A boarding school in Jubilife City. He knew almost nothing about Jubilife, and the school was intended for teenagers who’d returned from a Pokémon journey and wanted to continue their education. He supposed he could make something up. The paperwork—about course selection and registration details—remained blank and ignored. He could fill it in later.

In a way, he’d thought seeing Howard’s body would snap him out of whatever-was-wrong-with-him and make the full weight of the situation come crashing down on his head. It didn’t. He stood with Jarvis at the funeral and swore to himself with every molecule of his being that this would not be the last time they met.

The plane left two days later. He sleepwalked through departure and arrivals, only acknowledging the people around him when strictly necessary, point-blank ignoring them when it wasn’t. A car was waiting to pick him up—the airport was a fair ways out from the city, and he supposed the school didn’t want to bank on a taxi service.

It turned out that the man who was driving him was an english teacher, and wanted to know all sorts of things about him. “What’s your favourite subject?” he asked, as they turned down a winding road and finally entered the city.

“Um,” Tony said, and thought for a moment. “Nobody’s ever asked me that before,” he said, to explain his silence.

“Okay,” the teacher responded, quickly and quietly. “Okay, what do you _like_ to do?”

Tony’s throat felt like it was closing up. “I, uh—I like contests—” he blurted, then froze. That wasn’t the right answer. “Engineering,” he finished lamely. The car was turning down smaller and smaller roads. They’d be at the school soon.

“How many ribbons do you have?” the man asked, after letting Tony out of the car. The mountains that characterised the Sinnoh region were visible on all sides of the horizon, making Tony feel oddly claustrophobic. “From contests, I mean.”

“I don’t have any,” Tony admitted, staring at the ground and cursing the number of ways he must be a disappointment to this man. To this school, which had let him in with a trainer’s license acquired through nepotism and a pokémon he hadn’t caught.

“Oh,” he said. “Well, let’s head inside and I’ll get your paperwork off you, then.”

The vice-principal of the school greeted him in the office. “Tony Silph,” she said. He shook her hand on autopilot. “Take a seat.”

Tony filled out his birthdate and similar information on the fresh set of forms he was given by the vice-principal, but came to a screeching halt when he met the course selection section. Math and English were mandatory, as well as some course called Social Studies. He severely hoped it wasn’t what it sounded like. Taking two sciences was required, though they wouldn’t run consecutively. Three was possible, but it would eat up a spot that could be taken up with one of the optional courses. He pencilled them all in.

There were so many optional courses, though, and he didn’t even know what some of them _were._ “I don’t know what I want to do,” he said. “I _don’t._ ” He felt tears well in his eyes and buried his face in his arms before they escaped, but the sobbing and _horrible, ugly noises_ he was making weren’t fooling anyone, and why was he crying over a _form,_ damn it, he—

—he felt a hand against his back.

“It’s okay,” someone said, somewhere behind him. _The English teacher,_ he corrected. He was going to be in this guy’s class, and he’d already embarrassed himself in front of him. In front of more teachers, probably. “You don’t have to decide right now.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, and regretted it. _His voice sounded terrible. Everyone was going to know about this, everyone—_

—“It’s half-term right now,” the vice-principal said, interrupting his train of thought. “There aren’t any students in the school, so if you want to take a tour...” she trailed off.

“Sure,” Tony said. He stood up, legs feeling unsteady beneath him.

“Is this your first time at a boarding school?” the English teacher asked as they left the office and stepped into the hallway. Tony nodded. He wasn’t about to say that this was his first time being in a school at all. “We’re connected to the trainer schools in Jubilife,” the teacher explained. “Most of our students live in the area, but quite a few board. We’re halfway through the first term, but you shouldn’t have a problem catching up.”

The tour took them past most of the sections of the school, including the common room and both the gymnasiums—one designed for sports, the other for pokémon battles.

“We use the same stage for performances and contest practice,” he explained once they’d reached an auditorium. “As well as sports teams and our battle team, we have a coordinators’ team. They’re clubs, not classes, and you don’t need to try out.”

Tony said he’d think about it. “How does that work?” he asked. “Contest teams, I mean.”

“You go to bigger and bigger competitions—so, one just within the school, then a team gets sent to the city competition, then a competition between the nearest cities, then regionals. If you’re really good—and really lucky—you go to Worlds,” the teacher said, then paused. “What got you interested in coordination?”

“I, uh, I—” Tony started, his voice catching. “I went to a few contests. As a kid,” he finished. “With my...” he searched his mind for the word he’d use to describe Jarvis. He’d never really had to before. “My uncle.” It wasn’t very close to the truth, but he hoped it was close enough.

“Except for optional courses, you’re going to need to test into the subjects,” the teacher said, switching subjects. “This is just to see what level you’re at, so we can place you in the right groups.”

“When?”

“It needs to be done this week, before classes restart.”

Tony tried to mentally evaluate what he knew and didn’t know, and hoped that it was enough.

The first elective Tony settled on was Pokémon Studies, a generalistic course which had units on type theory, pokémon physiology, and the mechanics of different moves, among others. He’d learned enough about these subjects from Jarvis that he decided that he could probably get by. The second was Computer Science, a relatively new course and the most technologically focused of any available at the school.

He was alone in the dorm until the term re-started. There were eight empty beds, and he’d been directed to one which nobody had currently claimed. He wasn’t sure what the rules on pokémon were, but he let Delta out anyway and pulled her into his arms. She was _definitely_ going to shed into the bed, he realised.

He decided he didn’t care, and turned off the lights.

Tony woke up to Delta whining and sticking her muzzle into his face. It was late at night, and he wasn’t sure why she’d done it, so he shooed her away and went back to sleep. The next time he woke up, it was morning. He felt disoriented for a moment, somehow having expected that the bed he’d wake up in was the one he had in Kanto. Then, he noticed the time.

Twelve in the morning, and he hadn’t woken up.

Tony shot out of bed and got dressed as quickly as possible before returning Delta to her pokéball and rushed down to the lower floor.

“Can I help you with something?” someone called. A woman stood, arms crossed, in a door frame on the right end of the hallway. Tony walked closer.

“Is it actually twelve A.M?” he asked.

“No,” she said, “it’s two in the afternoon.”

Tony groaned. “I set my watch wrong.”

“Did you just arrive?” she asked. She either hadn’t recognised him yet, or she was being polite. His photograph had been plastered in enough places that most people recognised him eventually, and he knew that the media was probably running numerous Silph Company-related stories. She had to.

“Yesterday,” he said. “I came in from Kanto.”

“I could tell by your accent,” she said.

“I don’t have an accent,” Tony argued.

“Everyone has an accent,” she said, “but it isn’t important. I’m Ms. Sparks, a computing and math teacher here. How about you?”

“Tony,” Tony said. “Nice to meet you.”

Ms. Sparks smiled. “I already know a Tony,” she said. “What’s your last name? So I can tell you apart.”

Tony hesitated. “Silph.”

“Silph, as in the Silph Company?” she asked, like she was legitimately expecting a different answer.

“How many of us are there?” Tony said. “Yes. Howard Silph is—was—my father.”

Ms. Sparks stared. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing here?” Tony asked, flustered.

“Shouldn’t you be... being with your family?” Ms. Sparks trailed off.

Tony looked away. “I didn’t send myself here,” he said, trying his hardest to remain stoic.

“Oh, okay,” the teacher said, “I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t your problem,” Tony said, “um, do you know where I can get some food?”

Ms. Sparks paused. “The cafeteria isn’t running, because there aren’t meant to be students here at the minute. There is food in the staff room, though.”

“Oh,” Tony said.

“It’s not a problem,” Ms. Sparks hastily added. “I’ll take you down there.”

They made small talk on the way to the way to the staff room. Ms. Sparks was interested in what pokémon Tony had. She was fairly surprised to hear that he only had one, but particularly in that it was a working breed.

“That’s so interesting. Where did you get her from?”

“She was given to me,” Tony said, not wanting to elaborate on the situation. He’d never actually found out what circumstances Howard acquired her under, and he didn’t want anyone else speculating.

“And you never caught any others,” she said. “That’s pretty unusual.”

Tony shrugged. “If you have too many, you can’t spend time with all of them,” he said.

“Well, pokémon food is stored near the gyms. You’ll just have to go there to fetch some,” she replied. They turned a corner and stepped through the door that led into the staff room.

Several teachers who Tony hadn’t met yet were there, along with the vice-principal and the English teacher. After Ms. Sparks explained the situation, Tony was given temporary access to the staff room until the term started. It was technically only meant for access to food, but he ended up spending a fair amount of time in it: it got fairly lonely in the dorm, and he’d finished all of his books on the plane. He learned the last names of the English teacher (Larch) and the vice-principal (Waterlea), and met another math teacher as well as multiple science teachers.

The plan was for him to start the placement tests the next day—with the math tests. The following day would be English, then the next would be about chemistry and physics. The last test, on the Saturday before school started, would be biology.

The math test was easy almost all of the way through—it only really started throwing him off at the end. The english test was just _weird,_ though _._ Who cared about describing a picture of a thunderstorm? Why would anyone want to know what a poet meant when they wrote about red wheelbarrows, and why did it matter that it was next to white Torchics? Chemistry and Physics went a lot more like the math test. Biology was... okay. He knew a lot of things just from discussing them with Jarvis, but not a lot more than that.

He got his results back all at once. Mr. Larch explained them to him. “Basically,” he said, furrowing his brow, “you’re in the top class for math and physics. Second highest for chemistry, middle for biology. But you’re in the lowest class for English.”

“With questions like that, how was I supposed to get any marks at all?” Tony asked, staring at the papers suspiciously.

“They’re pretty normal questions for an English test, Tony,” Mr. Larch said. “What did you find difficult about them?”

“I don’t know,” Tony said. “They were just really strange. Was that even a poem?”

“It’s a pretty famous poem,” Mr. Larch said, leaning back. Tony made a noise. “You know, you did great in basically everything else. You just need to work on your essay skills.”

“S.A. skills?” Tony repeated back.

“Yeah, your essay skills,” Mr. Larch said. “Structuring what you write.”

“Okay, I can do that,” Tony said, trying to work out what, exactly, _S.A._ stood for.

“Great,” Mr. Larch said. “I’m looking forward to having you in my class.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pokémon that appear or are mentioned for the first time this chapter:  
>   
> [Torchic](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Torchic_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\))
> 
> The poem referenced is [The Red Wheelbarrow](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/red-wheelbarrow) by William Carlos Williams.
> 
> [Jubilife City](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Jubilife_City) is the largest city in Sinnoh.
> 
> In the Pokémon world, trainers often go to Trainer School before they go on their journeys... but we never actually get told what they do after. I decided that there would probably be a kind of school that children and teenagers returning from journeys could choose to go to, to continue their studies.


	5. Chapter 5

Mr. Larch gave Tony his timetable the day before school started. “I’ll be your homeroom teacher,” he said. They were standing in his classroom by the desk, having arranged to meet there the previous day.

“My trainer school didn’t have homerooms,” Tony said, hazarding a guess at the context of the word. He wasn’t sure what Giovanni had given the school in place of an official transcript, but he knew that they thought he’d been to one.

Mr. Larch gave him a quizzical look. “That’s pretty unusual,” he said, “maybe they do things differently in Kanto.” He briefly explained the concept of a homeroom—Tony would have to show up to his class before any others in the morning,  _ even _ if he had a different one with him next. Tony thought this was fairly dumb given that he had Social Studies with Mr. Larch nearly every morning, but agreed to this. He folded up the timetable and shoved it into his pocket. “That’s not all I need to talk to you about,” Mr. Larch said. “We need to contact your legal guardians—so, your mother and Giovanni—about arranging counselling.”

“Uh,” Tony said, not really processing. There were several things he didn’t like about that statement, so he blurted out the one that felt most urgent. “You can’t talk to my mom,” he said. “You can’t. She isn’t well.”

“We still need to contact someone, Tony,” he said, more gently this time. “If you want, you can make the phone call. But it has to happen.”

“You can do it,” Tony said, his mouth suddenly dry.  Across the week, he’d had several weird conversations about emotions with several different teachers—but he hadn’t suspected that they were leading  _ up _ to something. Everything from the week was rushing back. Everything from the week before. He screwed his eyes shut, trying to focus his mind on the present.

When he reopened them, Mr. Larch was frowning. “Do you want to sit down?”

Tony nodded. Mr. Larch pulled the chair that had been behind his desk toward him, and he collapsed into it.

“We’re not going to pay too much attention to your grades for the first term,” the teacher said. “You’re not only getting your bearings, you’ve missed half a term. But if you need catching up with anything, or if you need anything else, just ask, alright?”

“Sure,” Tony said, inwardly swearing to do the opposite. If it was going to end up like  _ this, _ he wanted to avoid that kind of conversation as far as he possibly could.

Mr. Larch said he’d call Giovanni later, and Tony finally managed to retreat from his room. The dorm was no longer a safe zone to hide in: other students had started to arrive and unpack their belongings and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to meet any of them yet. Eventually, the fear of one of them taking over his bed overpowered the fear of embarrassing himself, and he headed upstairs.

There were two boys in the dormitory when Tony arrived—a tall blond, and a significantly shorter brunet. Both looked at him with equal disinterest.

“Hey,” the tall one said, once he realised Tony wasn’t leaving. “You in the right room?” An Espeon wearing a reflective jacket padded out to the middle of the room.

“I think so,” Tony said, glancing back to check that he’d picked the right door.

“Oh,” the other one said. “Are you new?”

Tony nodded. “I came from Kanto,” he said, as if it was an explanation. Both boys nodded.

“I’m from Hoenn,” the shorter boy said. “And Clint is—”

“Sinnoh, all the way. But I’ve been  _ everywhere, _ ” he interrupted.

“I’m Bruce, by the way,” the brunet said, rolling his eyes. “The smart one.”

“We’re almost in the same classes,” Clint grumbled. “Hey...  _ guy. _ Can we see your timetable?”

“My name’s Tony,” Tony said, and retrieved the folded paper from his pocket. He mostly unfolded it, leaving the part with his name on it hidden. He passed it to Clint, who looked it over with Bruce. Neither seemed to notice the fold.

“English  _ One, _ ” Clint said. “What the heck did you do to get that?”

“Did badly in the S.A, I guess,” Tony said.

“I thought I did bad in the essay,” Clint said, “but I got in Five.”

“The English questions were ridiculous,” Tony said, defensive. “It’s the only one I got a one in, anyway.”

“Even I’m not in any One-classes,” Clint said.

“You’re in Math Two. That’s basically the same,” Bruce pointed out.

Clint grinned. “Well, you’re in all Fives. Your sense of difficulty is  _ completely broken.” _

“Whatever,” Bruce said. “Anyway, we’ve all got Larch for homeroom. Same Social Studies blocks. I’m taking Computer Science, and we’re all taking Pokémon Studies.”

“I’m taking P.E,” Clint said. “It’s the smart decision. Why study more, if you can study less?”

“I don’t understand,” Bruce began, “how you’re in  _ any _ top classes at all.”

Clint handed Tony his timetable back. “So,” he said, ignoring Bruce entirely, “what pokémon do you have?”

“I have a Growlithe,” Tony said.

After a pause, Clint stared. “Just a Growlithe?”

Tony nodded, and retrieved Delta’s ball from his pocket. “I only have one.”

“That’s a weird pokéball,” Bruce said. “Can I look at it?”

“Guy has one pokémon, and the weirdness of his  _ pokéball _ is your priority,” Clint said, shaking his head.

“I’ve never seen a red-and-gold model with this release mechanism,” Bruce said. “Where did you get it?”

“Someone gave it to me,” Tony said, staying vague. He’d just grabbed it off a shelf in the workshop—it was fairly likely that the model had never been released.

“Cool,” Bruce said. “Do you know a pokéball maker?”

“Yeah,” Tony said, “I do.”

Bruce nodded. “That’s awesome.”

“I’ve got an Espeon,” Clint said, “and a Staravia, and a Pikipek, and an Altaria, and—”

“Every other flying-type ever,” Bruce finished.

“No,” Clint said. “I also have a Fearow. And that’s it. But I’d  _ like _ to have every flying-type, for sure.”

“My starter is a Meganium,” Bruce said. “But I have a Ditto, an Aipom, and a Makuhita as well.”

“Can Ditto really turn into other pokémon?” Tony asked. 

“They can turn into things that aren’t Pokémon, too,” Bruce said. “But this one is a bit weird. He can change his body, but...”

“...his face stays the same,” Clint finished. “It’s hilarious.”

“Let’s see it,” Tony said.

Bruce shrugged. “We’ve got time to kill.” He retrieved his Ditto’s ball from a backpack and released it onto the floor. “Hey, buddy,” he said, crouching down. “Wanna turn into Lucky for me?” The Ditto, which looked for all the world like a pile of slime with a face drawn on with a pen, chirped and morphed into an Espeon.

“Okay, I see what you mean,” Tony said, barely containing his laughter. The Ditto’s face hadn’t changed one bit, making the facsimile completely unconvincing.

“Turn into Tony,” Clint told it, gesturing in his general direction. The Ditto morphed directly from the form of an Espeon to an almost-clone of Tony—with the face of a ditto.

_ “No, _ ” Tony said. “Put it back.”

The Ditto chirped again, then returned to its original form. Bruce recalled it. “See,” he said. “Pretty weird, right?”

“You could win a contest with that,” Tony said.

“That’s what I keep  _ telling him, _ ” Clint said. “But, noooo.” He waved his arms dramatically in an impression of Bruce that was simultaneously terrible and hilariously accurate. “I can’t. I have too much  _ science _ to, uh,  _ scientifify.” _

“I just don’t like the spotlight,” Bruce defended.

“I bet  _ Tony _ will join the coordination team,” Clint said, “right, Tony?”

“Don’t let Clint pressure you,” Bruce said, “it  _ never ends well.” _

“I was going to anyway,” Tony said.

Clint punched the air. “I knew it!”

Bruce glanced at Tony. “You’re not joining Archery as well, are you?”

“Didn’t plan on it,” Tony said.

“Good,” Bruce said. “We don’t need two of him.”

“Archery is  _ great, _ ” Clint said, and embarked on a defense of the sport that seemed to loop back to his own awesomeness at it remarkably often.

Tony ate dinner in the cafeteria for the first time that evening. The food was weirdly mediocre: it was on the right side of edible, but only just. The room was also stiflingly loud: by that time, most of the students had arrived. Focusing on Clint and Bruce and their bizarre topics of conversation made it better, though: he had no idea why or how the pair were friends, but it worked. Nobody else had been particularly friendly—or, at least, nobody had gone out of their way to talk to him.

He noticed that Clint was the only student with a pokémon that followed him around outside of its pokéball, and that it—Lucky—sat between him and Bruce at the table like it thought it was a human. When they were back in the dorm, he pointed it out.

Clint looked at him weirdly. “You’ve never seen a hearing pokémon before?”

“I, uh,” Tony said, “I thought they could all hear.”

“Where have you been  _ living? _ ” Clint asked, with a level of incredulousness that could have either been real horror or extreme exaggeration. “Under the  _ biggest rock in the universe?” _

“To be fair to Tony,” Bruce said, “I don’t know anyone who actually  _ has  _ one except for you.”

“Yes, but,” Tony said, “what's a 'hearing pokémon', if not a pokémon that can hear?”

“Deaf,” Clint said, gesturing to his ears. “Lucky hears things for me. He’s a psychic-type, so... he just... I don’t know  _ how _ it works, but basically, I hear what he hears.”

“And it isn’t disorienting?” Tony said.

Clint shook his head. “It was when I got him,” he said, “but not any more. I can sign as well, though.”

“That’s really cool,” Tony said, “I guess I never thought about it before?”

“Most people don’t,” Clint said. “Seriously, though, not having heard of one? I don’t get it. Actually, though the reason you don’t see anyone else with pokémon—beside a few other assistance ones—is that you’re not supposed to have them running around the school. It would be chaotic.”

“Oh,” Tony said, thinking about how he’d let Delta out in the dorm before the others had arrived.

“Yeah,” Clint said. “There’s always that one guy every year who decides the rules don’t apply to him. And something stupid  _ always _ happens.”

“In my Trainer School, it was Squirtle Boy,” Bruce said. “The school was flooded for  _ days.” _

Clint nodded sagely. “In mine, it was a Wailmer.”

“How did  _ that _ happen?” Bruce said. “A Wailmer wouldn’t fit in a school.”

“That’s the point,” Clint said. “My  _ education _ was  _ disrupted.” _

Bruce rolled his eyes. “Because you care so very much.”

Footsteps echoed in the hallway. The vice-principal peeked through their door. “I’m looking for Tony Si—”

“—GOTTA GO,” Tony yelled, interrupting her before she could finish saying his name. She looked a bit taken aback, but she hadn’t revealed his identity, either.

“...Bye?” Bruce said, sounding somewhat confused.

“I’ll be back later,” Tony promised, trying to leave before the vice-principal managed to say anything else. “Bye!”

The vice-principal led him to some kind of meeting room, where Mr. Larch was already present. 

“You called him,” Tony said.

“Yeah,” Mr. Larch said. “Apparently, he’s already set up counselling for you. Outside of the school. Were you aware of this?”

_ No, _ Tony thought. “Yeah,” he said. This was the first he’d heard of it.

“He wants to talk to you as well,” Mr. Larch said. “Do you want to call?”

“Sure,” Tony said, and punched in Giovanni’s personal number—the one he’d given the school but not Tony. The phone rang five times before being picked up.

“Giovanni?” Tony said. “This is Tony.”

“The school says they want you to talk to a counselor,” Giovanni said. “So I lied to them. What would your father think?”

“I,” Tony said, “I don’t know.”

“Nothing good,” Giovanni said. “Now, thank me  _ sincerely _ and hang up.”

“Thanks,” Tony said, his heart sinking to his feet. He hadn’t wanted counselling, but he hadn’t wanted this reaction either. There was a click on the other end of the line. Giovanni had hung up. He put the phone back in its hook. “It’s all worked out,” he said, to Larch and the vice-principal. “You don’t need to worry about it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pokémon belonging to Clint introduced or mentioned for the first time this chapter:  
>    
> [Espeon](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Espeon_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\)), [Staravia](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Staravia_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\)), [Pikipek](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pikipek_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\)), [Altaria](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Altaria_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\)), [Fearow](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Fearow_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\))
> 
> Pokémon belonging to Bruce introduced or mentioned for the first time this chapter:  
>   
> [Ditto](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Ditto_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\)),[ Meganium](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Meganium_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\)), [Aipom](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Aipom_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\)), [Makuhita](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Makuhita_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\))
> 
> Other pokémon introduced or mentioned for the first time this chapter:  
>   
> [Squirtle](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Squirtle_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\)), [Wailmer](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Wailmer_\(Pok%C3%A9mon\))
> 
> A while back, I found a [comic about assistance pokémon](https://imgur.com/gallery/o9XdV) I really liked. So that's a pretty direct inspiration for Clint's Espeon, Lucky. The name 'Lucky' is from the name he gives his dog in the Fraction/Aja comics. I thought it was a fun reference.


End file.
